Double trouble

Can European policymakers handle the crises in the Crimea and the Central African Republic (CAR) simultaneously? The chaos in CAR appeared to top the agenda in Brussels in mid-January, when the European Union’s member states gave the green light to sending up to 1,000 peacekeepers to help stabilise the capital, Bangui. Less than two months later the bloc is still scraping these soldiers together and all eyes have turned to the Ukraine.

It is impossible to claim that CAR is as important to the EU as the Crimea. While the Union has launched numerous crisis-management operations in Africa since 2003, most recently in Mali, many strategists have dismissed these as humanitarian distractions. France has fought an increasingly lonely battle in favour of missions to its former colonies. Even Paris admits that it is time to prioritise containing Russia.

Yet if Russia’s Ukrainian intervention has raised the spectre of a new Cold War, the EU cannot simply return to a pre-1989 focus on East-West tensions. Crises in Africa and the Middle East and Africa continue to threaten European security.

CAR may have little strategic significance, but both Mali and Somalia have offered bases for Islamist militants. Syria has become an especially fertile breeding-ground for Al-Qaeda’s affiliates, drawing in a growing number of recruits from EU member states.

The fundamental dilemma shaping European security policy in the years ahead may well be the need to parry threats from Russia, the Middle East and Africa at the same time. This actually resembles the Cold War in many ways.

While NATO held the line in West Germany, France and Britain tried to stamp out small wars in the Third World, usually with unpleasant results. But it was clear that the ultimate strategic challenge lay in Moscow. Today, there is no such overarching geopolitical certainty.

Russia may be a revitalised menace to the EU’s east but it is not the driving force behind Al-Qaeda’s operations in the Sahel or the chaos in Libya. President Vladimir Putin has protected Syria’s regime, but his leverage in the wider Middle East is limited. Even if Putin did not exist, Europe would still face a motley variety of crises and enemies.

It is arguable that the EU should aim to accommodate Russia’s behaviour in Ukraine and Syria for precisely this reason. Yes, Putin is a brute, but he is a middle-weight thug capable of stirring up trouble only in his backyard. Let Russia assert itself in local disputes, and the EU can concentrate on insulating itself from terrorism and securing its energy supplies, in addition to sorting out its internal economic woes.

This argument overlooks Russia’s desire for renewed global influence. Moscow is likely to look for more opportunities to confront the West as it has done over Syria.

Perhaps Europeans should cut back their extraneous strategic commitments – by leaving CAR and Mali to the United Nations and African Union, for example – and prepare for a lengthy test of political wills with Putin.

Many European governments shy away from such a direct strategy out of self-interest.

The United States has been frustrated by the EU’s unwillingness to tackle Russia head-on during the Ukrainian crisis. But whatever the EU’s approach to Moscow, it would be foolish to imagine that Europe can isolate itself from northern Africa and the Middle East: chaos in both regions will only nurture future threats and conflicts.

Ultimately, the EU’s members have to retain the capacity to tackle crises on both their eastern and southern flanks. The current situation in CAR may be a bloody sideshow compared to the great game over Ukraine. But the EU should send its troops to central Africa, just to show that it can fight more than one battle at once.

Richard Gowan is research director at the NYU Center on International Co-operation and a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.